Michael Moynihan: Does using VQ as a catch-all term affect MacCurtain Street’s identity?
The Civil War The Funeral Of Palace September Irish In Archive Passes In 1922 A Of The Theatre Picture Cork Street, Victim Maccurtain
Now the election is over, I think it’s clear who the big winner was — Hairy Baby T-shirts, thanks to the man wearing Maybe I LIke The Misery at the Cork City count. (I’m a Pairc Uí Rinn Or Nowhere man myself).
Anyway, I think it’s safe enough to talk about something political again.
Like dropping the VQ name from official usage.
The term is used for the area around MacCurtain Street and has been successful in creating a brand and conveying an experience, encouraging locals and tourists alike to visit the area to shop and socialise.
In all honesty, I’m not sure how many people refer to it as the VQ in everyday speech, which may be part of the point going by accounts of a recent meeting of Cork City Council.
In short, the term VQ was used by Fine Gael councillor Joe Kavanagh in a motion calling for an additional Garda presence in the area, and an amendment by Sinn Féin to remove the term was voted down.
Coverage of the meeting suggested councillors were claiming the V stood for ‘vibrant’ rather than ‘Victorian’.
Councillor Michelle Gould of Sinn Féin said: “This isn’t an official place in Cork City and renders an important motion on policing and safety completely meaningless."
Clearly, any number of factors could be taken into consideration here.
There was a general election going on at the time, for one.
In addition, the main street running through this part of the city is still known as MacCurtain Street. That has not changed, no matter what the branding.
Bear in mind also the purpose of the rebranding. If meant to encourage people to visit a particular segment of a city, then there is a strong argument to support it. Getting people to change their behaviour — and spending patterns — in this way is often a challenge, and giving an area a particular name and identity can help with that.
Visitors to New York are familiar with places like SoHo (south of Houston Street) and TriBeCa (the Triangle below Canal Street), designations which help orient the visitor.
It’s also reasonable to presume that those behind the rebranding exercise meant no disrespect to the memory of Tomás MacCurtain.
If you dig into the archives you’ll find two years ago the term ‘Victorian’ was even dropped from the name, according to area spokesman Derek Shears: “It’s a conscious decision to remove that issue as a barrier to conversations about what we are really about. History is what it is. And we are proud of our history and heritage.
“We are not ashamed of it but we recognised, from a practical point of view, that if people's opinions on that name deflect from what we are about, we needed to eliminate that as an issue.”
All of these have their counter-arguments, of course.
Also, MacCurtain Street may still be the name of the area’s main street but if local businesses and the municipal authority prefer the VQ as a catch-all term, then it’s possible to feel the street’s identity is being subsumed into the quarter’s brand.
And no matter what party raises a particular issue, if their members make a valid point surely that supersedes the point’s origins?
To be honest, as a controversy, this shrinks in comparison with another point raised at that council meeting, a revelation which is scarcely believable to me.
Sinn Féin councillor Kenneth Collins pointed out that in 2021 it was unanimously agreed by Cork City Council to rename Anglesea Street after another former lord mayor, Terence MacSwiney. That still has not been done, three years later, but Collins pointed out: “... apparently, a street named after one of Cork’s heroes can just be renamed on a whim.”
As small kids going to school, MacSwiney and MacCurtain were figures who weren’t that distant from us.
For me and many more classmates, the route up to the North Mon took us past the Pantry at Blackpool Bridge, where MacCurtain was shot to death in front of his family. Theo Dorgan, a few years ahead of us in the school, had included a reference to the murdered lord mayor in the best poem about Cork ever written:
Theo’s death squad, of course, crept back towards town after the killing in Blackpool; they’re popularly believed to have hurried into the RIC barracks on King Street, near the bottom of Summerhill South.
A few weeks later, that street was renamed MacCurtain Street thanks to a motion proposed by the new lord mayor: Terence MacSwiney.
By October, MacSwiney was dead himself after 74 days on hunger strike.
It needs to be pointed out that Cork city councillors come in a long line going back to those two mayors of Cork, men whose example elevates the standing of the municipal office of our home city above any others in the country.
Tomás MacCurtain was the sitting lord mayor when he was murdered. The crime galvanised his fellow Corkonians to the extent the subsequent inquest returned a verdict of wilful murder against the British prime minister Lloyd George and his various accomplices.
His successor made the office of lord mayor of Cork a byword for freedom all over the world. Terence MacSwiney’s hunger strike and death were global news at a time when the world was a far less connected place.
In Australia, Barcelona, Buenos Aires, Paris, New York, and the Vatican, MacSwiney’s slow deterioration was tracked by countless thousands. His writings influenced Gandhi in India and according to legend Ho Chi Minh wept at the news of his death.
All of this and more is covered in Dave Hannigan’s excellent , which tells readers how one man put Cork City on the front of the and inspired lovers of freedom everywhere.
When I spoke to Dave a few years back he said: “I think this story is just one of many from that whole era that have been allowed to fall through the cracks of history.
“In the 90 years since MacSwiney’s death, there was just one other serious book about his life. We are terribly cavalier and casual about the incidents and events that shaped the future.”
And about marking the importance of those events, it seems. Let’s get this done.